Decision fatigue is real

I want choices — but not too many choices. This magnificent recipe can help.

There’s a little wine bar in Cape Coral that I love. It’s no place fancy. It’s dark and cool and decorated with thrift-store furniture. Instead of sports, its couple of TVs play random footage roaming the streets of far-off cities — Vancouver, say, or Hong Kong.

I don’t go out much. Not even to this little wine bar. If I’m not at a restaurant review trying to decide between the steak frites or the bao buns, I’m most likely home, trying to figure out something else to make with chicken, getting beat at Go Fish by my 7 year old, trying to decide what to watch on Netflix or HBO, wondering if our free trial of Apple TV will yield anything decent beyond the sincere magnificence of “Ted Lasso.”

The reason I love this wine bar, the reason I’ve been back to it so often, is that it’s a place where I don’t have to make decisions. The owner-bartenders know what I like and what I don’t. I can tell them what kind of mood I’m in, and they’ll pour me a glass of something delicious.

It’s a place where I don’t have to figure anything out.

So much of our lives are spent figuring things out.

Things I love: Wine, cookies, having one less decision to make

Maybe that’s the great irony of adulthood. We grow up having everything decided for us: our outfits, our meals, our bedtimes. If your mom’s a Filipina nurse who moved halfway around the world in hopes of giving her potential offspring a better life, tack on your studying hours, the formatting of your index cards, how you memorize the periodic table.

We long to break free of this structure. We want to grow up and make our own decisions, dammit. Now we get to. AndohmygodI’veneverbeensoexhausted.

There are, I’ve read, services and subscriptions where you can outsource certain decisions — for a price. Consultants who will pick your wardrobe for you. Nutritionists who will tell you how much to eat and when to eat it. Bankers who will tell you where and how to spend your money.

There’s also jail. You don’t have to make any decisions in jail.

I find myself, now firmly in middle age, searching for that middle ground. I want a choice. I believe deeply in the power of choice. But I also find myself gravitating towards places and things that limit the decisions I have to make.

I love a concise restaurant menu. I love a wine bar that will tell me what to drink while I’m there and which bottles I should take home. I love a sure-thing recipe with thousands of five-star reviews.

This newsletter is my way of making one small decision for you this week.

This recipe is one of my go-tos. It’s one I’ve made dozens upon dozens of times. It’s a decision that makes itself after a long Tuesday or a jam-packed Sunday.

I wish I could take credit for this brilliant sauce, but that goes to the legendary Marcella Hazan, may she rest in peace. This isn’t a Filipino recipe (I promise, I’m working on those!), it’s an Italian one, and like the best recipes it’s magnificently simple. It requires just three ingredients, four if you count salt. It’s also infinitely adjustable. Add a few smashed cloves of garlic if you like. Add some pepper, a sprig of thyme, a dash of chili flakes. Or don’t.

Those decisions are yours to make, should you choose to.

Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter

Ingredients

2 pounds fresh, ripe tomatoes blanched, skinned and coarsely chopped; OR (because who am I kidding, I haven’t blanched a tomato in years) 1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes (cans of chopped or whole tomatoes work, as well)

5 tablespoons of butter (I’ve gone down to as few as 3, but butter is the beautiful backbone of this sauce, don’t shy away from it)

1 small to medium onion, peeled and cut in half

salt to taste

Directions

Place either the prepared fresh tomatoes or the canned tomatoes in a saucepan, add butter, onion and salt. Bring to a bare simmer. Cook uncovered at a low simmer for about 45 minutes. (Honestly, you can stop at 20 minutes and it’ll still be wonderful, but the longer it simmers, the softer and more delicious that onion will be.)

Stir occasionally. If using chunky tomatoes, be they fresh or canned, mash up the large pieces with a fork or wooden spoon. Continue cooking until the sauce has thickened and the melted butter pools at at the top of the pot.

Before serving, remove the onion. You’ll find it transforms into something, soft, jammy and sweetly delicious: perfect for draping over crusty bread or for chopping up and eating with your pasta.

You can ladle this sauce over noodles, use it on homemade pizza, pair it with ground beef for a simple meat sauce, or just lick it from the back of a spoon (it’s that good). You’ll have to make some decisions. Good luck with them.